Customer rating

Share this product

Description

This dissertation, "In the Mood for Music: Sonic Extraterritoriality and Musical Exchange in Hong Kong Cinema" by Chih-Ting, Chen, 陳智廷, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled In the Mood for Music: Sonic Extraterritoriality and Musical Exchange in Hong Kong Cinema Submitted by Chen Chih--‐Ting for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong in September 2015 Through the lens of Wong Kar--‐wai's In the Mood for Love, this thesis brings to light select aspects of two neglected genres - 'singing' films and 'song--‐and--‐dance' films - in Chinese--‐language cinemas. It revisits the understudied Orphan Island period (1937--‐1941) and Japanese occupied period (1941--‐1945) in Shanghai, and postwar Hong Kong Mandarin and Cantonese cinema in the 1940s through 1960s. In the Mood for Love recycles the inserted film song "Hua Yang De Nian Hua" and repackages it in the "wrap" of the nine repetitions of Umebayashi's film music "Yumeji's Theme" to reflect on Japanese--‐occupied Shanghai and the repercussions of the occupation in postwar Hong Kong. Treating Wong's film as a resonating chamber, where a diverse set of sonic regimes vie for attention, I invent analytic tools such as "intertexturality" to consider the conundrum of repetition in film music; "sonic extraterritoriality," to mark out a sonic elsewhere or an alternative temporality; and "musical exchange," which denotes the way in which characters, filmmakers, and audiences give, receive, and reciprocate film music and songs as gifts, and then "unwrap" them to reveal their hidden meanings. In the Mood for Love is thus placed into the context of "Chinese reflexive cinema," a cinema which engages in dialogic relationship with inter--‐ Asian films